Wednesday, June 14, 2006

"Over the past few weeks, the German pontiff has been seen sneaking back to his old room outside the Vatican walls three times, La Stampa reported yesterday.

At about 9pm a plain, dark car carrying 78-year-old Pope Benedict and his private secretary, Don Georg Gaenswein, swirls out of a side door of Vatican city. It then doubles round in the back streets before arriving at 1 Piazza Citta Leonina, a hall of residence for senior Church figures and the Pope's home as a cardinal for almost 24 years.A Vatican security guard is always waiting in front of the apartments in a pedestrian zone tucked behind St Peter's Square. The Pope gets out of the car disguised in the plain black priest's robes he wore when he was the Catholic Church's senior theologian.Wearing a black hat and with his head down, he opens the wooden door himself, as he did for all those years, and tiptoes inside followed by Don Georg."Its is not a question of just dashing in for a few minutes to grab a bag or a book," La Stampa said. "He spends at least a couple of hours there."Nine months after moving into the spacious papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace overlooking St Peter's Square, Pope Benedict appears to be hankering after his old, reflective life as a cardinal and a theologian in a bedsit."